1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to wireless data networks, and more particularly to backhaul access service to wireless data networks.
2. Related Art
Wireless data networks have provided mobile connectivity for subscribers under fixed wireless and/or mobile wireless modes. Generally, the evolution of fixed wireless access has given rise to mesh data networks (such as those provided under IEEE §802.16 specifications) that may provide “last mile” connectivity to households and/or businesses providing broadband data rates. In regions without pre-existing physical cable or telephone networks, such technology may provide a viable alternative for broadband voice and data access. Further, mesh data networks have evolved to incorporate mobile wireless access support to subscribers.
For large-scale deployment, mesh networks require deployment of hundreds to thousands of mesh base transceiver stations, with each base transceiver station requiring backhaul wire and/or optic fiber cable access to Internet networks and/or backbones. As a result, large numbers of cables have been needed for the backhaul access, incurring large deployment costs in time, material, and labor. Further, such deployments incur data transmission delays to accessing the backhaul networks, undercutting the advantages that otherwise may have been realized by the bandwidth available by the mesh data network technology.
Thus, a need exits to increase the efficiency in the cost of deploying mesh base transceiver stations with sufficient backhaul access, and to further refine the efficiency in the data transmission from a mesh base transceiver station to a backhaul access node to take advantage of the bandwidth of the mesh data network technology.